


Hold on to Anything

by deliciousshame



Series: Sentinel/Guide AU [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 00:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8511070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousshame/pseuds/deliciousshame
Summary: Daiki can accept that his guide doesn't want him anymore. That's his choice, and he'll respect it, damn it.





	

The assistant coach is singling him up again. And they wonder why he doesn’t come to practice. He’s got better things to do than be preached at by some “helpful” guide noticing he doesn’t have his own guide and trying to tell him how to control himself, like he didn’t spend pretty much all his life dealing with this. So the guy is a specialist at helping sentinel athletes. Big deal. Daiki is a specialist at dealing with himself. 

There are a lot of people that don’t get how a sentinel as powerful as him can even stand to participate in a team sport. All the noise, the terrible smells, the subpar uniforms irritating his skin. Daiki thinks they’re mostly assholes that just find it unfair he plays with enhanced senses. Whatever, Daiki doesn’t care about their problems. It’s not like his senses make him faster or put the ball in the basket. That’s all him, thanks. 

Not that his senses aren’t part of him anyway. He’s good. He’s in control of his shit. He really doesn’t need that guy’s help.

First, Satsuki knows more about guide stuff than almost every single guide he knows. That’s just how she is. He started having problems focusing when he was very young, zoning out because of the sound of the cicadas crying or the overpowering smells of the neighborhood’s festival, and Satsuki being Satsuki, she decided that was her problem. He remembers her, standing so small between the tall shelves, pulling books almost bigger than her, confident that the solutions to their problem was hidden within the pages and all would be solved if she could just find the right passage. 

Second, he’s got his facts wrong. Daiki has a guide. Actually, he has had a guide for years. Just because they’re not really speaking right now doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a guide, and it is rude as hell for some random guide to encroach on someone else’s sentinel and start lecturing them. You just don’t do that.

He never actually told Satsuki that all her tips and tricks and careful purchases of sentinel-friendly products never helped half as much as the touch of Tetsu’s hand on his shoulder, his faint scent or a few soft-spoken words in a tone that might seem monotone to others, but Daiki could hear all the nuances it hid. It’s been that simple for him since that first time they met. 

He remembers it all like it was yesterday. His spirit animal, usually absent, had been prowling around the gym since the beginning of the year, keeping him, the other sentinels and the guides on their toes, especially the nervous one with the rabbit. It’s not his fault he’s so naturally intimidating that his spirit animal is a panther, okay? Deal with it. Anyway, it spends a ridiculous amount of time being a goofball. You just had to look for it. Daiki had no idea where it took that from. 

So it has been wary. Daiki thought it might just not be used to the new environment, or there was someone he considered a threat around, which was really plausible considering the company he kept. 

He’d never thought it was his guide it was sensing until that moment, when he entered that gym looking for a ghost and instead found Tetsu, and then had only clued in after he felt his panther’s irritation as it was staring up at the snowy owl perched in the beams, too far from reach, staring down, looking unmoved. Well, owls always look unmoved. He did get a bit lost there, staring at the unrealistically pure white of its unmarred feathers, until Tetsu had patted him lightly and said “Aomine-kun?” and he’d gone back to reality instantly, called back by something he didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. 

Daiki sighs. That’s all in the past now. 

It’s unheard of for a pair of sentinel and guide of their age to go to different schools, never mind cutting ties the way they did when they’re both still so young. Daiki could file a complaint and get a court order to have Tetsu transferred to Touou, citing concerns for his health and safety without his guide to preserve him. By law, as long as he’s a minor and thus, presumed not to be in control of his own senses, he has the right to spend every day near his guide. If he did, Tetsu would pretty much have to suck it up and accept Daiki’s new status quo. 

He’ll never do something like that. To begin with, Tetsu would hate everything about Touou’s basketball club, and even if he doesn’t look like it, he can hold a grudge with the best of them. Daiki doesn’t want to make things worse between them. 

It’s not like he needs to either. They didn’t work out. Some sentinels can’t stand their guide. Some guides have no idea how to work with their sentinel. Daiki and Tetsu had irreconcilable differences. It happens. Daiki can deal. He’s been doing it for months without problems. He’ll just continue to do so, and the assistant coach will have to handle it or Daiki will let him know in no uncertain terms how unrequited his attentions are. 

He’ll probably find out anyway. Now that he knows Tetsu has taken to basket again, they’re bound to play against each other at some point, and even if they went their separate ways, his panther is still quite possessive. No doubt it won’t bother to stay away. Stupid spirit animal that gives no fuck about what other people think. 

Oh well. It’ll happen when it’ll happen. He’s really good at dealing by now. It’ll be just one more shitty thing in the story of his life. 

_______________

It’s common knowledge that sentinels are territorial. People often assumed he wasn’t, because he didn’t care when guys hit on Satsuki. 

People that knew him better, well, know better. He can’t count how many times he had to kick Kise off Tetsu, unable to stand how rude he was being. Kise can get his own guide and leave his alone, thanks. 

(He’s secretly convinced Tetsu loved it. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell, but he could scent how pleased he was, could notice the minuscule curl of his lips when he looked poker-faced to others.) 

Then he met Kagami. fucking. Taiga, and all bets were off. Here was that guy who can’t even do half-decent during a simple one-on-one, smelling way too much like Tetsu and daring to set himself up as his replacement? Yeah right, as if. Daiki is gonna take down that guy no matter what it takes. He can’t have Tetsu, fine, he’ll accept that, but not for that guy’s sake. No way. He’d gone to see Kagami and had let Satsuki see Tetsu half out of respect for his choices, half out of sick curiosity, but now it’s personal. He’s taking that guy down. 

_______________

Yeah, he knew this would happen, but it’s still annoying and sort of embarrassing to see that damned panther skirting around the court to go straight for Seirin’s side, only to stare, pouting, at Tetsu’s owl perched on a high beam near the roof. It looks ridiculous, such a big predator acting like a sulking kitten, and the people that are able to see spirit animals are confused about what is happening. Who cares about them. Who cares about anything but winning. All that, it doesn’t matter right now. 

It won’t matter later. It doesn’t anymore.

Until, much later, he loses, and then a lot of things start mattering again. 

_______________

It’s on that darkly lit court where Tetsu summoned him that Tetsu whispers his name softly to shake him away from the moonlight reflecting in his ey… reflecting. It’s the first time he acts as his guide since they parted ways back in Teikou. Daiki didn’t have major problems when they were apart. Satsuki is always there for him, and he really knows how to control himself. This kind of miss isn’t normal for him. Maybe he lets himself go because he’s knows he’s safe when Tetsu is here. Maybe he just wants to feel like he still matters to him, like when this would have been nothing special, just an everyday thing that made him feel blessed. 

He tries not to read too much in the way the owl deigns to not only show up, but to rest low enough for his panther to reach and rub its head against its soft feathers gently, without disturbing the owl's balance. It’s purring. 

Daiki isn’t jealous.

Tetsu is laughing at him anyway. “Hey!” 

Tetsu is… petting his head. “Here, don’t be envious of your own spirit animal, that’s pathetic.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have to be if he wasn’t having it better than me.” 

Tetsu is giving him a strange stare. “Your panther never hid what he wanted.”

Now he’s being lectured because of it. Stupid normal people have no idea how good they have it. “It’s an animal, it doesn’t know better.”

Tetsu gives him a look that betrays how little he thinks of that. “Maybe he gets what he wants because he asks for it.” 

“Are you telling me you want me to beg? Oh please, Tetsu, I can’t live without you~” 

He gets an eye roll for his efforts. “I think that might be enough training for today. See you tomorrow, Aomine-kun.”

Oh shit, if Tetsu wants to stop training he fucked up. He must be pissed. “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you.”

Tetsu says nothing, but he’s not leaving either. If Tetsu wants to hear what Daiki wants, he will. Daiki takes a deep breath and talks on. “It’s not like I wanted you to go, but that was what you chose and I just wanted to respect your wishes, so by the time I got my head out of my ass long enough to notice you were gone, I just backed off.” Asshole sentinels bossing around their guides is a common problem, and Daiki didn’t want to walk down that road. Tetsu didn’t seem like the type that would take that anyway. 

There’s nothing here about basketball, and maybe it’s missing, but this is this and that is that. They’re not on the same team anymore, and that’s okay, Daiki made his peace with that, but. “You playing at being Kagami’s guide?” That jerk, he manages not to add.

Tetsu blinks. “He’s not even a sentinel.”

“What!?” He’s not!? Why did no one tell him that! Why didn’t Satsuki? 

At least he gets a smile. “Aomine-kun, were you being jealous again?”

“Fuck yes I was! You’re mine! That jerk can’t have you, that’d be rude as hell!”

…Damn it. “Sorry. Forget I said that. Your choice, I don’t have a say here, I know.” He just said he wasn’t going to be a possessive asshole sentinel, for fuck’s sake. Just because some unknown whatever in his blood says that they’re each other’s doesn’t give him the right to force him one way or the other. Time to shut the fuck up. 

Tetsu seems to waver. “…I thought you didn’t want me anymore. You were always very in control, I was just being a burden, I figured out it would be better if I left altogether.”

Did Tetsu just. “What, no! What give you that idea! …Okay, I know what, but you were wrong. I never wanted you to go anywhere. I never imagined you anywhere else.”

“…Close your eyes.”

Daiki is confused for like two seconds by the non sequitur, but he spots the red rising under the fair skin and can hear Tetsu’s heartbeat speed up a bit, so he gets a clue and closes his eyes obediently, and tries not to flinch with nerves when Tetsu’s lips touch his timidly. 

It’s over almost as soon as it begins. Daiki opens his eyes and tries not to melt a little at Tetsu’s embarrassed face and fleeing eyes. It’s with a slightly shaking voice that Tetsu says “Was that okay with you?”, which, of course that was okay with him, Daiki has pretty much wanted to kiss Tetsu since the first time their skin touched. Keeping his asshole sentinel impulses in check had been a total pain in the ass, but he’d thought he'd managed not to fuck everything up and not scare Tetsu off. Turns out he’s been totally wrong about that. 

Maybe he should answer him. “Totally fine, I’m super okay with it, in fact if you want to do that again whenever I’m on board. Fuck that, let’s just do it again now.” And Daiki sends all that damned restrain to the wind, grabs Tetsu and kisses the breath out of him. 

When he lets Tetsu go, he looks a bit dazed and just says “Oh”. Then he says “I’m not going to Touou. You come to Seirin.”

Which, sorry but no. Daiki has a feeling that he and the goody two shoes team would destroy each other within a week. “How about no but we go on dates instead?”

“Okay. Come pick me up next Sunday.”

“Sure.”


End file.
